Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Commissioner, I understand that at 10:15 this morning, you don't want to say whether re-opening the Saint-Jean Royal Military College would be a good thing for the Canadian Forces. However, I'd simply like to remind you that, in your presentation, you said that when it was operational, this college allowed anglophone officers to take part in an immersion program that was unequalled in North America.
Military personnel are not federal public servants with a particular job in a specific location. Being a soldier means moving around. It's clear that francophone military personnel with expertise, skills and specific knowledge are called on to be mobile and to move around to different units. It is somewhat utopic to believe that... we can segregate francophone, bilingual and anglophone corps, when mobility is pretty much the norm.
In this context, I truly believe that a unilingual francophone soldier may find it difficult to feel included and to work in his own language, if his superior officer cannot speak French, no matter what label that unit wears.
Don't you think that wanting to label bilingual francophones and anglophones is a bit strange, as is imposing this on the Canadian Forces?